A major challenge students face when it comes to final year project is project topic selection, for a fact; your decision on the topic to submit to your department for consideration marks the beginning of your failure or success. The topic you select has the capacity of determining your grade from day-one.

All tertiary institutions have their pattern of organizing students to commence research project, hence we will look at the common methods used by most tertiary institutions in Africa.

Procedure for Submitting Project Topics

1. The department designates a group of lecturers (committee) to oversee the collection, organization and assigning of project topics.
2. The committee sets a standard and instructs students to submit minimum of three (3) of their most preferred topics for vetting and approval.
3. Students submits their project topics to the department
4. The committee examines the submitted topics and selects the most suitable topics which matches their laid-out standards (one out of the three topics submitted by students is selected).
5. For topics that needs to be changed, recommendations are made accordingly, otherwise such topics are recast instantly.
6. Lecturers are assessed based on their areas of specialization and topics that fall within their field of specialization are assigned to them (the topics are shared equally in most cases to avoid uneven distribution)
7. Files containing approved project topics are sent to their respective supervisors.
8. The supervisors contacts and invites students under their supervision for a meeting and start-up instruction.
9. Students get their files from supervisor and commences with their proposals.

The Correct Procedure for Getting a Project Topic

1. The first thing expected of you is to decide whether to develop a new project topic or use an existing topic;
2. If you decide to go for a new project topic, the following should be done;
3. Do proper search for existing problems within a State or Local Government Area.
4. Once you identify a problem, contact any lecturer of your choice (preferably a senior lecturer) and seek professional assistance on the identified problem.
5. Develop a fresh topic (in lieu of the problem found and examined) under the guidance of the lecturer.

If you are going to use existing topic, then you are expected to start on time. The best time to start is during your industrial training, in the course of the training, try to discover areas with major challenges, be sure that these challenges happen consistently. Get literatures addressing similar challenges you’ve identified and study them meticulously.

If you have five (5) literatures with similar subject, write out their statement of problems and try to find a connection and at the same time find their key arguments.

Find a gap in the literature

Take out thirty (30) minutes to think about what you’ve read.

Get a pen and a note and compose a topic that talks about the gap identified.

After composing the topic, consult a lecturer so your topic(s) will be sharpened.

***if you couldn’t identify a problem during your industrial training exercise, you could search for one in your immediate environment and consult literatures to see what others have said about the problem, then follow above step to develop a suitable project topic.

Note: For those who just copy project topics from the library, there is a high chance of your project topic being recast which may not go well with you, especially if you already bought materials online on a particular topic.

**Getting your project topic shouldn’t cost you a dime, your spendings should be from the date of approval.

**Some students get lucky sometimes in getting their project topics approved, but remember you are not in control of the decision of your Head of Department (HOD) or research committee in assigning you to a lecturer, so if you are lucky your topic could be assigned to a lecturer who won’t bother you much. Moreover, should your topic get to the hands of meticulous senior lecturers, especially those pursuing their PhD’s or shrewd in research methodology, you will have a serious problem dealing with them.

What a Carefully Selected Project Topic Can Do for You

If your project topic is carefully and properly selected, it will do the following for you:

1. It Will Make Your Study Easy to Start: Since you already have an idea of what the problem is about, it naturally becomes seamless for you to commence. You now know what materials to read, how to state your problem, in fact writing your background of the study becomes meat for you.
2. You Will Love Your Topic: There is nothing more than loving your project topic, when you love your topic, you wouldn’t need any one to remind you before hitting the street in search of data, the natural laws of love make you attracted to your work and puts you in a state of self-drive. Loving your topic keeps you on top, you will always be propelled to go the extra mile.
3. Failure Is Not an Option: The fact that you are familiar with your project already means that you will always be on your toes to succeed with the study. Having started well, you wouldn’t want to jeopardize your chances of finishing well.
4. It Will Speed Up Your Investigation: Being aware of what is needed in the course of your research helps you to complete every task with speed. Your topic is like a candle light, a direction by which you magnet other relevant resources such as data; having the right data already brings you close to conclusion.
5. Your Supervisor Will Make You a Priority: Having the right topic makes the work easy for your supervisor, he/she wouldn’t have a need to recast your project topic, it will be easy to connect with your topic and instruct you accordingly; his/her eyes will be on you to ensure you don’t drift away. In most cases your supervisor will be itching to have your work published. Once your project supervisor takes interest in your project topic just be rest assured that you’ll finish with nothing less than an “A”.